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Wind Energy Research Center Vision

The vision of the Wind Energy Research Center (WERC) is to establish an internationally recognized program for conducting wind energy related research and education. WERC collaborates with other groups inside and outside the university to provide service to the state and the nation.

Mission

WERC provides experimental and computational capabilities as well as intellectual resources to carry out internationally unique research that aids in the nation's goal of enhancing energy security while reducing energy-related environmental impact. No single institution can address all areas of wind energy research, so the center strategically partners with other academic institutions, federal laboratories, and companies with complementary capabilities. Coupled with this research mission is the commitment to produce part of the workforce necessary to the large-scale penetration of wind into the energy market.

Principal Investigator, Wayne Miller and
Co-investigators Jay Sitaraman and Dimitri Mavriplis were awarded a Tier Two
allocation from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for their proposal
titled “Large Scale Simulation of Wind Farm Aerodynamics inTurbulent
Atmospheric Inflow Conditions”. The Grand Challenge program allocates almost
nine million (cpu-hrs/wk) to projects that aim to significantly advance both
their discipline and LLNL’s computational capability. To read the groups
winning abstract click here.

New transmission and generation infrastructure, relative to
power generated by Wyoming’s vaunted wind, would help diversify the state’s economy
with more high-paying jobs -- both during the construction and operation phases
-- while providing economically priced renewable power to California, according
to a recent study conducted by the University of Wyoming’s Wind Energy Research Center.

In 2003, Dimitri Mavriplis was working at NASA’s Langley Research Center in
Hampton, Va., using computers to help perfect aircraft designs for the nation’s
aeronautical research agency. Then he received an offer from the University of Wyoming that he simply
couldn’t pass up. “The Mechanical Engineering Department was looking to start a
program in computational fluids, and that’s exactly what I wanted to do,”
Mavriplis says.

News

February 14, 2012 — Explaining the technical and economic factors of residential-scale wind turbines earned two University of Wyoming graduate students first place and $1,000 in the 2011 Energy Education for the People writing contest.

May 9, 2008 — The University of Wyoming Board of Trustees today (Friday) approved the first phase of a planning process for a building that will house a large, closed-loop wind tunnel within a center focused on wind energy research.

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Supercomputer Could Maximize Wyoming Wind Energy Producers' Efforts

October 31, 2011-Dr. Jonathan Naughton spoke about the potential impact of the NCAR computer before the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority board about the National Center for Atmospheric Research.